The Final Chapter

As you might expect, the final chapter here is the end of the game - funny how that kind of stuff works out. Your final merchant is here, so take advantage of the opportunity to upgrade your weapons one last time. Keep in mind that you'll be able to keep your weapons and play the game again after you beat the final boss, so you may want to hold onto anything that you were otherwise planning on selling. That said, you will need to have enough room in your inventory for a rocket launcher to beat the upcoming boss, so you may want to sell off your rifle and scope if you still have one; they're not going to be very useful here. By the same token, if you have insettable gems, you can save them until you find something to set them in next game round.

Boss Fight: Saddler

Ruh-roh; the bad man is angry. Luckily for you, there's no meddling about with different forms here; Saddler will immediately bust out his badass spider form, and all you have to do to win is kill that. It's not overweeningly hard to do so, but, as you might expect, you're going to need a little bit of skill and a few restorative items in your inventory before you can really hope to succeed. Luckily, you won't need much in the way of ammo, so if you're running low, then you should be able to spare the rod and still spoil the child, and we can certainly all agree that Saddler has been a bad boy indeed.

The Layout

There are three main areas that encompass the Saddler boss fight. The first is the large open area in which you begin. You'll want to avoid this area as much as possible, as it'll be difficult to get around Saddler if he blocks your exit. The primary focus here will be on the two platforms nearby. Each of these is connected to the other by a pair of retractable bridges; these are seemingly busted, though, and will flip up and down throughout the fight. When they're up, you can just barely run across if you start as soon as they come up. If you're caught in the middle when they drop, you'll have to jump to the far side with the L+R buttons, then climb up by tapping A. While you do this (it takes a few seconds), you'll almost always give Saddler enough time to leap from platform to platform and land right in front of you, so…that's fun. Still, you'll have to do this a few times during the fight to avoid Saddler, so try to wait until just after the platforms lock in place to walk across.

Attacks

Saddler has a few attacks at his disposal. If he gets close to you, he will, of course, slash at you and stomp you into the ground. This is where most of the hurt here is going to come from, but luckily, he's not a very fast boss, meaning that you should be able to outrun him most of the time. He's big enough to take up most of the space on either platform while he moves, so on occasion you won't have much choice but to try and run around him on either side and hope he doesn't hit you; you can even walk underneath his legs if necessary. If you're standing on one of the elevated areas at the end of either platform, Saddler's main mouth will occasionally pick you up and slam you into the ground.

Besides his close-range attacks, Saddler has two main unique attacks. The first will come when he launches himself into the air and attempts to land on you. This is tough to see coming - he'll just jump, with a minim of preleminary animation - but so long as you're not caught with a weapon out, you can either run forward or start backing up and stand a good chance of getting out of the zone of punishment.

Next up is Saddler's charge attack. When he's about to burst forward, he'll start clanging his legs into the ground; after he's done this three or four times, he'll start coming at you. Although he doesn't move too fast - this is really more of a sidle than a charge - Saddler can turn while charging, making this difficult to avoid without running from one platform to the other, which is the best course of action when you see this one coming.

Lastly, Saddler does have some environment-based attacks. The first time you run to one end of a platform while Saddler's on the other side, he'll push over the upright girders and throw them at you. Depending on the distance between you and him, this can be almost impossible to dodge, so you'll likely wind up eating a bit of damage. Luckily, you'll only have to deal with it a couple of times during the fight. Secondly, when you're on one platform while Saddler's on the other, he'll pick up fallen girders and chuck them at you. These are a bit easier to dodge, although the timing is still pretty tricky, especially if you're moving along the platform and don't have him in your field of vision; you can get some warning from sound cues, but it's still a dicey affair on the whole.

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